It was constructed in the 16th century by the Order of Saint John, on or near the site of an Ottoman battery from the Great Siege of Malta.

The battery forms the lower tier of St. Peter & Paul Bastion of the Valletta Land Front, located below the Upper Barrakka Gardens and overlooking Fort St. Angelo and the rest of the Grand Harbour.

It was restored and opened to the public in the early 21st century, and it is now equipped with eight working replicas of SBBL 32-pounders which fire gun signals daily, Mon - Sat, at 1200 and 1600.

During the siege, Ottoman forces mounted cannon on the Sciberras Peninsula (now occupied by Valletta and Floriana) to bombard the Order of Saint John in Fort St. Angelo.

The bastion has a multi-tiered artillery platform, from which guns could be mounted to command the full length and depth of the Grand Harbour.

[3] Soon after the British occupied Malta in 1800, the three daily gun signals (at sunrise, noon and sunset) began to be fired from the Saluting Battery instead of Saint James Cavalier, as they had been during the order's rule.

When the battery was undergoing maintenance, the shots were fired from Fort St Angelo on the opposite side of the harbour.

[6] During the 1920s, the civilian authorities began pressing the government to cede the Saluting Battery in order to extend the Upper Barrakka.

[1] Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, the Malta Heritage Trust, acquired the battery in 2004 and began to restore it to its late 19th century configuration.

[8] After restoration, the battery was initially equipped with eight original 24-pounder Blomefield cannon made between 1790 and 1810,[9] but these were transferred to a museum and replaced with eight working replicas of SBBL 32-pounders in 2011.